The network meets IT at Management World in Nice

It's Management World 2013, the telco IT and back office's big week out, although of course these days with the development of the software telco the network-IT divide is decreasing yearly.
There have been a fair few network-related announcements dropping into the TMN inbox already, so here's a quick resume. These announcements tend to be from where the network and IT worlds collide, with things like the Policy environment, network OSS and what you might term "user centric" network performance management coming to the fore.

Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services. By allocating bandwidth based on the devices requesting it, operators can zero-rate voice traffic over LTE networks, manage voice sessions on IMS networks and implement quality of service controls for VoLTE calls.

Wi-Fi services. The Policy Server recognises when devices are on Wi-Fi networks, which allows operators to differentiate charging of services based on network access type.

Analytics. The system feeds records of certain policy actions to enterprise analytics solutions to uncover network knowledge such locations of congestion and rogue applications.

“Service providers are entering an era of new opportunities to transform the delivery of mobile data services and partner with advertisers, businesses and Wi-Fi network providers,” said Houck Reed, vice president of product management and marketing at Tekelec. “Tekelec’s Policy Server provides the underlying technology to usher in new flexible offers and partnerships, and give service providers ThinkingNetworks that align network resources with subscriber needs and revenue drivers.”

Empirix Empirix announced Empirix Roaming and Inter-carrier Assurance Analytics, solutions that combine service assurance and network analytics to provide performance and business intelligence insights on inter-carrier traffic.

Empirix said that with Intercarrier traffic playing an increasingly critical role in network operation, mobile network operators need to know that outbound roamers being steered to specific networks are receiving the quality being requested. Additionally, carriers need to ensure a quality experience for inbound roamers, especially those from high-volume partners.

“Gaining visibility into roaming and call routing across multiple networks and environments can be difficult,” said Franco Messori, Chief Strategy Officer of Empirix. “With Empirix Roaming and Inter-carrier Assurance Analytics, operators benefit from new insight into quality as they pass calls, data and roamers to partner networks to assure performance and capitalise on new revenue opportunities.”

Service providers are seeking business agility by tightly aligning key operational functions and eliminating the silos created by too many systems that are generic in nature and not designed keeping in mind specific nuances of the communications industry

MYCOM
The network performance management provider launched V4 of its NIMS-PrOptima network performance management solution.
Mycom’s pitch is that its new version addresses the scale and performance challenges of managing end-to-end performance across large, complex and multi-layered networks. Each minute, billions of disparate performance-related data records are created by network equipment across access, backhaul, core and service networks that need to be transformed into actionable intelligence for troubleshooting, analysis and reporting in near real-time.

Enhancements include:
Scale: up to 400,000 network elements managed on a single system instance
Real time: enhanced near real-time visibility down to 5 minute intervals
Capacity: 40% increase in data records processed to over 10 Billion per hour and 25% increase in data importation performance
Dynamic updates: Enhanced network topology and configuration data with dynamic discovery and update of network configuration multiple times per day

Mycom also announced that its solution has been helping T-Mobile Austria manage the rollout and operation of its LTE network. The deal here, accroding to Athanasios Avgeridis, Senior Vice President Operations, T-Mobile Austria, was that “the introduction of LTE/4G introduces further complexity within a multi-layered network that requires network performance management systems to provide end-to-end visibility across multiple network domains from within a single unified system.”

NETCRACKER
Amongst a general release for its TOMS product, NetCracker 9.0 included a nod to SDN for OSS/BSS, specifically “an industry first, SDN and vEPC-enabled BSS/OSS that further accelerates the drive towards virtualisation, from data center to the network.”

NetCracker’s release said Netcracker 9.0 offers: “Full SDN-BSS/OSS integrated solution that enables higher network and IT asset and service utilisation through optimised resource allocation across network and IT. It also ensures enhanced customer experience through up and down dynamic scaling of network resources, and pre-integrated service and network fault and problem management coupled with customer impact analysis.”

Ari Banerjee, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading, said, “On the IT side, service providers are seeking business agility by tightly aligning key operational functions and eliminating the silos created by too many systems that are generic in nature and not designed keeping in mind specific nuances of the communications industry.”